Springfield College hosts MLK Jr. lecture panel
The panelist featured state senator Adam Gomez, president of Mount Holyoke College Danielle Holley, and Martin Luther King Jr. Family Services CEO Shannon Rudder.
The discussion covered a wide variety of topics related to MLK Jr. and his legacy. The guest speakers were also asked to reflect on the current social and political climate under the new presidential administration, especially as diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives disband nationwide.
'You cannot celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King and not believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion,' says Honey. 'To me, this kind of 'Santa-Claus-ification' of Dr king is something that when we celebrate the holiday. We have to fight actively against that, I encourage people to read more than just, 'I want my children to be recognized for the content of their character and not the color of their skin.'
The lecture also celebrated the 61st anniversary of Dr. King's commencement address to Springfield College back in 1964.
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on WWLP.com.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
8 hours ago
- New York Post
Voting rights protected by the historic Voting Rights Act threatened as law has its 60th anniversary
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wednesday is the 60th anniversary of the day President Lyndon Johnson made his way to the U.S. Capitol and, with Martin Luther King Jr. standing behind him, signed the Voting Rights Act into law. The act protected the right to vote and ensured the government would fight efforts to suppress it, especially those aimed at Black voters. For many Americans, it was the day U.S. democracy fully began. That was then. 7 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 60 years ago. AP The law has been slowly eroding for more than a decade, starting with the 2013 Supreme Court decision ending the requirement that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting get federal approval before changing the way they hold elections. Within hours of the ruling, some states that had been under the preclearance provision began announcing plans for stricter voting laws. Those changes have continued, especially since the 2020 presidential election and President Donald Trump's false claims that widespread fraud cost him reelection. The Supreme Court upheld a key part of the Voting Rights Act in 2023, but in its upcoming term it's scheduled to hear a case that could roll back that decision and another that would effectively neuter the law. Voting rights experts say those cases will largely determine whether a landmark law passed during a turbulent era decades ago will have future anniversaries to mark. 'We're at a critical juncture right now,' said Demetria McCain, director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 'And, let's be clear, our democracy is only about to turn 60 when the Voting Rights Act anniversary gets here. I say that because there are so many attacks on voting rights, particularly as it relates to Black communities and communities of color.' Native Americans celebrate a win that could be temporary The reservation of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Canadian border, a region of forests, small lakes and vast prairie land. Its main highway is a mix of small houses, mobile homes and businesses. A gleaming casino and hotel stand out, not far from grazing bison. In 2024, the tribe and another in North Dakota, the Spirit Lake Tribe, formed a joint political district for the first time. They had filed a lawsuit arguing that the way lines were drawn for state legislative seats denied them the right to elect candidates of their choice. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Peter Welte agreed and put a new map in place. 7 The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and another tribe in North Dakota, the Spirit Lake Tribe, formed a joint political district for the first time in 2024. AP State Rep. Collette Brown ran for the legislature because she wanted to see more Native American representation, and she won under the new map. 'It felt surreal. I felt accomplished, I felt recognized,' said Brown, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and the Spirit Lake Tribe's Gaming Commission executive director. 'I felt, OK, it's time for us to really start making change and really start educating from within so that we're not silenced.' Brown, a Democrat, co-sponsored several bills on Native American issues that became law, including aid for repatriation of remains and artifacts and alerts for missing Indigenous people. 7 The future of the tribes' district is in the hands of the Supreme Court. AP This year's anniversary of the Voting Rights Act 'forces you to look at how far we've come,' from Native Americans to women, said Jamie Azure, chairman of the Turtle Mountain tribe. Now the future of their district is in the hands of the Supreme Court. Will individuals be allowed to file voting rights challenges? The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers North Dakota and six other states, overturned Welte's decision 2-1, saying the tribes and entities such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU do not have a right to sue over potential violations of voters' constitutional rights. That ruling expanded on an earlier 8th Circuit opinion out of Arkansas that rejected a different challenge on the same grounds. Late last month, a 3rd Circuit court panel ruled in a separate case out of Arkansas that only the U.S. attorney general can file such cases — not private individuals or groups. 7 The University of Michigan Law School Voting Rights Initiative found that since 1982 nearly 87% of claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act were from private individuals and organizations. AP Those decisions upended decades of precedent. The Supreme Court has stayed the ruling for the tribes while it decides whether it will take the North Dakota case. The University of Michigan Law School Voting Rights Initiative found that since 1982 nearly 87% of claims under that part of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2, were from private individuals and organizations. Leaving individuals without the ability to file challenges is especially troublesome now because the Justice Department under Trump, a Republican, seems focused on other priorities, said Sophia Lin Lakin, who heads the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! 7 Voters waiting in line to cast their ballots in Fort Defiance, Ariz., on Election Day in 2024. AP The government's voting rights unit has been dismantled and given new priorities that, she said, have turned enforcement 'against the very people it was created to protect.' The Justice Department declined to answer questions about its voting rights priorities, cases it is pursuing or whether it would be involved in the voting rights cases coming before the nation's highest court. Supreme Court weighs another case on race and congressional districts Two years ago, voting rights activists celebrated when the Supreme Court preserved Section 2 in a case out of Alabama that required the state to draw an addition congressional district to benefit Black voters. Now it's poised to rehear a similar case out of Louisiana that could modify or undo that decision. 7 The Justice Department declined to answer questions about its voting rights priorities, cases it is pursuing or whether it would be involved in the voting rights cases coming before the nation's highest court. AP The court heard the case in March but did not make a decision during the term. In an order on Friday, the court asked the lawyers to supply briefs explaining 'whether the State's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.' Robert Weiner, the director of voting rights for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said while it is a 'matter of concern' that the court is asking the question, the fact the nine justices did not reach a decision during the last term suggests there weren't five votes already. 'They wouldn't need re-argument if the sides had already been chosen,' he said. Trump's Justice Department shifts focus on voting issues At a time when the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act are under threat, the Justice Department has shifted its election-related priorities. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, it has dropped or withdrawn from several election- and voting-related cases. The department instead has focused on concerns of voter fraud raised by conservative activists following years of false claims surrounding elections. 7 Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Justice Department has dropped or withdrawn from several election- and voting-related cases. AP The department also has sent requests for voter registration information as well as data on election fraud and warnings of election violations to at least 19 states. In addition to the shift in focus at the Justice Department, federal legislation to protect voting rights has gone nowhere. Democrats have reintroduced the John Lewis voting rights bill, but it's legislation they failed to pass in 2022 when they held both houses of Congress and the White House and needed some Republican support in the Senate. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order seeking to overhaul voting in the states, which includes a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voting form, though much of it has been blocked in the courts. The GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. And gerrymandering state legislative and congressional districts remains prevalent. The slow chipping away at the 60-year-old law has created a nation with an unequal distribution of voting rights, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights center at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Some states have been active in expanding access to voting while others have been focused on restricting the vote. 'The last five to 10 years,' he said, 'the experiences of voters increasingly depend on where they live.'
CBS News
13 hours ago
- CBS News
The Henry Ford continues to preserve Civil Rights artifacts
Brick by brick, beam by beam and shingle by shingle, a house where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others planned marches in support of Black voting rights in the Deep South has been trucked from Alabama to a museum near Detroit. The intricate operation to move and preserve the Jackson Home and other artifacts from the Civil Rights era preceded President Trump's efforts to eradicate what he calls "divisive" and "race-centered ideologies," and minimize the cultural and historical impact of race, racism and Black Americans. Trump's purges have sought to remove all reference to diversity, equity and inclusion from the federal government and workforce, and many private companies have followed suit. The establishments that house some of the most important reminders of African American history — including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. — have come under particular pressure. The chief executive of the Henry Ford, the new location of the Jackson Home, insists the museum has no political agenda. "The Henry Ford's work is focusing on good, factual public history," Patricia Mooradian told The Associated Press. King was often at the home of Dr. Sullivan and Richie Jean Jackson in Selma, Alabama, during the pivotal years of the Civil Rights Movement in the early '60s. It was within the walls of the 3,000-square-foot bungalow that King and others strategized a series of peaceful marches from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery, that helped usher in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Jawana Jackson told AP in 2023 that she decided to ask the Henry Ford — a history museum complex in Dearborn, Michigan — to relocate and preserve her parents' house and its contents because she believes " the house belonged to the world." The building was taken apart and carried more than 1,000 miles to be reconstructed in Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford, and archivists are digitizing and cataloging some 6,000 items contained within. They illustrate the movement's efforts to seek equal rights despite the often violent response of angry mobs and the police. "The fact that the Jackson family saved things for this long, even though they may have been out of date or old, they knew the significance of all the things that were in that home, and they saved them and preserved them," Mooradian said. The second Trump administration has made it clear that viewing history through what it considers a "woke" or antiwhite lens will not be tolerated. The president has made specific moves to remove any reference to divisions over race, gender or sexuality in national institutions. Last week, the Smithsonian Institution removed from an exhibit a reference to Trump's two impeachments in 2019 and in 2021. The Democratic majority in the House voted each time for impeachment. The Republican-led Senate each time acquitted Trump. A Smithsonian spokesman said the exhibit eventually "will include all impeachments." The U.S. has withdrawn from the United Nation's cultural agency because, according to the White House, UNESCO "supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November." Trump also fired the Kennedy Center board and slashed funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities. And the president issued an executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," that condemns the Smithsonian Institution — a vast complex of museums, galleries and a zoo — for what he calls its "widespread effort to rewrite history." The Smithsonian includes the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology," Trump wrote. "This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive." Mooradian said she is saddened by the order. "I think museums are such an important part of our culture and our heritage, not just in this country but around the globe," she said. "And it's important that we tell the truth, that people look to us for the truth, not for opinion, not for judgements but for the truth." Just weeks after Trump's March executive order, the Rev. Amos Brown, pastor emeritus of San Francisco's Third Baptist Church who was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, said he was notified that two family bibles and a book on Black history that he lent to the African American history museum in 2016 would be removed from the collection. Brown blamed the president for the snub, calling it an attempt to "wipe out our identity." He said last month that the books have not been returned to him. The Smithsonian said in a June statement that it "routinely returns artifacts per applicable loan agreements and rotates objects on display in accordance with the Smithsonian's high standards of care and preservation and as part of our regular museum turnover." The Smithsonian and the African American museum have not responded to AP interview requests. The National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History are holders of some of the most iconic artifacts from the Civil Rights era, including the lunch counter and stool from a Greensboro, North Carolina, diner where a group of Black college students conducted a sit-in to protest segregation. Other items are on display in museums across the U.S. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson has on loan a door from a grocery store where witnesses said 14-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago whistled at a white woman in 1955. Till had been visiting relatives in Mississippi. Soon after, he was abducted and his body was later pulled from a river. "We can be guardians of these very few and fragile remains," said Kathryn Etre, director of conservation at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. "We're not going to hide the pain and all of the terror and all the awful things that happened. We try to be unbiased and tell every side of the story."
Washington Post
15 hours ago
- Washington Post
The Voting Rights Act marks its 60th anniversary as its core provisions are being eroded
WASHINGTON — Wednesday is the 60th anniversary of the day President Lyndon Johnson made his way to the U.S. Capitol and, with Martin Luther King Jr. standing behind him, signed the Voting Rights Act into law. The act protected the right to vote and ensured the government would fight efforts to suppress it, especially those aimed at Black voters. For many Americans, it was the day U.S. democracy fully began . That was then. The law has been slowly eroding for more than a decade, starting with the 2013 Supreme Court decision ending the requirement that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting get federal approval before changing the way they hold elections. Within hours of the ruling , some states that had been under the preclearance provision began announcing plans for stricter voting laws. Those changes have continued, especially since the 2020 presidential election and President Donald Trump's false claims that widespread fraud cost him reelection. The Supreme Court upheld a key part of the Voting Rights Act in 2023, but in its upcoming term it's scheduled to hear a case that could roll back that decision and another that would effectively neuter the law. Voting rights experts say those cases will largely determine whether a landmark law passed during a turbulent era decades ago will have future anniversaries to mark. 'We're at a critical juncture right now,' said Demetria McCain, director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 'And, let's be clear, our democracy is only about to turn 60 when the Voting Rights Act anniversary gets here. I say that because there are so many attacks on voting rights, particularly as it relates to Black communities and communities of color.' The reservation of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Canadian border, a region of forests, small lakes and vast prairie land. Its main highway is a mix of small houses, mobile homes and businesses. A gleaming casino and hotel stand out, not far from grazing bison. In 2024, the tribe and another in North Dakota, the Spirit Lake Tribe, formed a joint political district for the first time. They had filed a lawsuit arguing that the way lines were drawn for state legislative seats denied them the right to elect candidates of their choice. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Peter Welte agreed and put a new map in place . State Rep. Collette Brown ran for the legislature because she wanted to see more Native American representation, and she won under the new map. 'It felt surreal. I felt accomplished, I felt recognized,' said Brown, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and the Spirit Lake Tribe's Gaming Commission executive director. 'I felt, OK, it's time for us to really start making change and really start educating from within so that we're not silenced.' Brown, a Democrat, co-sponsored several bills on Native American issues that became law, including aid for repatriation of remains and artifacts and alerts for missing Indigenous people. This year's anniversary of the Voting Rights Act 'forces you to look at how far we've come,' from Native Americans to women, said Jamie Azure, chairman of the Turtle Mountain tribe. Now the future of their district is in the hands of the Supreme Court. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals , which covers North Dakota and six other states, overturned Welte's decision 2-1 , saying the tribes and entities such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU do not have a right to sue over potential violations of voters' constitutional rights. That ruling expanded on an earlier 8th Circuit opinion out of Arkansas that rejected a different challenge on the same grounds. Late last month, a 3rd Circuit court panel ruled in a separate case out of Arkansas that only the U.S. attorney general can file such cases — not private individuals or groups. Those decisions upended decades of precedent. The Supreme Court has stayed the ruling for the tribes while it decides whether it will take the North Dakota case. The University of Michigan Law School Voting Rights Initiative found that since 1982 nearly 87% of claims under that part of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2, were from private individuals and organizations. Leaving individuals without the ability to file challenges is especially troublesome now because the Justice Department under Trump, a Republican, seems focused on other priorities, said Sophia Lin Lakin, who heads the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. The government's voting rights unit has been dismantled and given new priorities that, she said, have turned enforcement 'against the very people it was created to protect .' The Justice Department declined to answer questions about its voting rights priorities, cases it is pursuing or whether it would be involved in the voting rights cases coming before the nation's highest court. Two years ago, voting rights activists celebrated when the Supreme Court preserved Section 2 in a case out of Alabama that required the state to draw an addition congressional district to benefit Black voters. Now it's poised to rehear a similar case out of Louisiana that could modify or undo that decision. The court heard the case in March but did not make a decision during the term. In an order on Friday, the court asked the lawyers to supply briefs explaining 'whether the State's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.' Robert Weiner, the director of voting rights for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said while it is a 'matter of concern' that the court is asking the question, the fact the nine justices did not reach a decision during the last term suggests there weren't five votes already. 'They wouldn't need re-argument if the sides had already been chosen,' he said. At a time when the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act are under threat, the Justice Department has shifted its election-related priorities. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi , it has dropped or withdrawn from several election- and voting-related cases. The department instead has focused on concerns of voter fraud raised by conservative activists following years of false claims surrounding elections. The department also has sent requests for voter registration information as well as data on election fraud and warnings of election violations to at least 19 states. In addition to the shift in focus at the Justice Department, federal legislation to protect voting rights has gone nowhere. Democrats have reintroduced the John Lewis voting rights bill , but it's legislation they failed to pass in 2022 when they held both houses of Congress and the White House and needed some Republican support in the Senate. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order seeking to overhaul voting in the states, which includes a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voting form, though much of it has been blocked in the courts. The GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. And gerrymandering state legislative and congressional districts remains prevalent. The slow chipping away at the 60-year-old law has created a nation with an unequal distribution of voting rights, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights center at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Some states have been active in expanding access to voting while others have been focused on restricting the vote . 'The last five to 10 years,' he said, 'the experiences of voters increasingly depend on where they live.' ___ Dura reported from Belcourt, N.D. Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report. ___ Follow the AP's coverage of voting rights at .
